


To The Roots

by PoorYorick



Category: Thor (Movies), Thor: Ragnarok - Fandom
Genre: Family Feels, Fantastic Racism, Loki is cynical, Odin's A+ Parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-08
Updated: 2017-11-08
Packaged: 2019-01-31 01:47:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12665769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoorYorick/pseuds/PoorYorick
Summary: Post-Ragnarök/Spoilers: Thor tries coming to terms with Odin casting out his daughter and lying about it. Loki has some experience in that department.For ms-aqua-marvel who prompted me: "Post Ragnarok, Thor and Loki coming to terms with all the lies Odin told them. (Especially Thor! I feel like his head must have been spinning that whole first act! :c )"





	To The Roots

„I keep trying to imagine her as a child," Thor said, not turning his head but looking at Loki through the mirror from where he was standing and unbuckling the chestplate. It was no ceremonial armour or in any way fit to be worn by the king of Asgard but he felt that if he began wearing Sakaarian clothing, he would not only insult what remained of Asgard's traditions but also inevitably commit serious crimes against good taste. These last weeks had given him more than his fill of clashing bright colours. 

His brother crossed his legs at the ankles where his feet were resting on the table still very much engrossed in his book. He was wearing loose clothing and his hair was still wet from the shower and Thor took it as a good sign that his brother felt comfortable enough to show this measure of vulnerability around him. Or perhaps it was just another way to manipulate him. 

If it was, it was working. It felt normal, having Loki back at his side and in his personal space more often than not. Before - it all seemed so long ago now, but it had only been a few, brief years, hadn't it? - he would never have questioned his brother's presence and it still felt right. Even if he had learnt to appreciate it now. Thor felt like a lost appendage of his body had grown back. Only the pangs of distrust reminded him of the things that had changed between them. 

“An angry child in an enormous headgear throwing blades around the royal gardens,” Loki suggested and Thor grinned at the mental image of it as he sat down next to his brother, close enough for their shoulders to bump into another. 

“Can you imagine Mother’s fury if she had destroyed the rose beds?”  

“No dessert for at least a week, I’d think.”  

Thor wondered what the punishment for turning her beloved flower beds into a cloud of smoke swirling around the cosmos was. He wondered whether Loki had maintained them in the first place during his reign, but he couldn’t imagine anything else.  

“Any reason for this sudden…sentimentality?” Loki asked suddenly, his narrowed eyes almost suspicious as if he thought Thor had tricked him somehow. Maybe he had. Sometimes Thor felt like he was doing something forbidden when he caught Loki in one of his gentler moods and spoke to him like they used to not so long ago. As if he was taking advantage. Taking something he had no right to and keeping it for himself. 

“It's only...musing. I wonder whether father played the same games with her as he did with us?” 

Instead of answering, Loki put his book aside, closing it carefully. “Would it ease your mind if he had or if he had not?” 

No version of a young Hela living in their home, walking the halls they played catch in and dining at the tables they had eaten from could 'ease his mind'. 

“You went inside the palace as well. Saw what I saw,” Thor pressed on. Loki didn’t give away anything, waiting in silence for Thor to specify. “The paintings. He had them covered up. She was his child – his daughter – and they went into battle side by side. She followed his command. And then one day he erased her. All those decades they taught us the history of Asgard and it was all lies. Every time he called me his Firstborn he lied…” 

“You wonder if he loved us at all. Any of us, if he could do to her what he did,” Loki said and Thor had to keep himself from snapping at him – it was disgraceful to question their father’s love when he was no longer able to defend himself against Loki’s usual ruthless accusations against their father. But Thor had no right to chide his brother. Because now _he_ was questioning too – and he was the one who waited until the Allfather was no longer there to justify his actions. There had to be a reason why he had acted as he had and why he had stacked lie upon lie... 

 “I’ve never shared with you what I learnt about the family I was born to," Loki suddenly said. "Have I?” A rhetorical question. As far as he knew, Loki had never willingly spoken about his true heritage with another living soul and certainly not with Thor.  

Slowly, Loki removed his feet from the table and sprawled deeper into his seat. There was a look of concentration on Loki’s face, as if he was planning each word of what he about to say. 

“I have two brothers," He began, but then corrected himself before Thor could even take affront. "Brothers in blood. Younger than me. Býleistr and Helblindi. Or maybe I ought to say 'had'. I might have killed them for all I know.” There was no regret in his voice, but Thor refused react to Loki's callousness. One word out of turn would shut Loki up for good, Thor could sense it. “Feared warriors. And well-beloved by their people and their father. If Helblindi survived, he is now the king of the frozen realm. I never cared to find out. And yet I think of them ever so often and I wonder whether they knew of…of their brother. The one their father had forsaken on some rock. And if they did – whether they feared a similar fate if they ever fell out of their king’s favour or whether they condoned what he had done. Abandoning unwanted offspring might just be a custom among these savages – if they have customs at all. Their parents might never have spoken of me. Lied and concealed that I had ever existed. Perhaps I never have, to them.” 

Loki’s gaze was distant, lost somewhere in mid-air and another world entirely, a lost world. 

“Why didn’t you see for yourself? These last four years you could have-“ 

Loki’s eyes focussed again and his head snapped around, silencing Thor with naught but a glare.

“They are no kin of mine,” Loki said pointedly. “Do you know why Laufey left me to die?” 

Thor knew. Odin had explained to him how he had found the child on Jötunheim. Small for a Frost Giant. A runt. Weak. But Thor knew better than to answer the question asked – he knew how his brother hated to be found lacking. 

“He looked at me and he didn’t see himself looking back at him. His sons – the sons he raised – they were his own. They were giants in every sense of the word. They were strong. They were healthy. I was not. I was everything he detested. He could not love me.” 

Thor wanted to interrupt – to protest, because the last part almost sounded like a defence of the Frost King's actions – but Loki forbad it with a single raised finger. 

“Odin loved his daughter because she was the same as him. Together they conquered, they waged wars – of course he loved her. But when he changed his ways and she didn’t – she was a mirror and he no longer liked what was looking back at him. He removed her.” 

“Our father-“ 

“He loved you. He loved you, because you were everything he wanted to see. And when you were not – he corrected you.” 

“Is that truly what you think? That all he wanted us to be were mirror images of himself?” 

“Looking at you, surely. I'm the child of monsters – as long as I didn't go around eating children, his parentage was an enormous success.” 

“He loved you.” 

Loki snorted, but didn’t answer. 

“I don’t believe it. That he just wanted to shape his children to appease his…ego.” 

“Then don’t. If it makes you feel better. Our family has enough stories to choose from. You might as well pick one that keeps you in good spirits.” Loki’s tone didn’t conceal his true thoughts – that Thor was a _fool_ for refusing his cynicism. Maybe the same innocence that had been shattered inside Loki had been shattered inside Hela too – the knowledge that the very people meant to love them unconditionally had deemed them unworthy to exist; were so ashamed that they had tried to erase them from the universe. It was a pain Thor couldn’t begin to comprehend and that he didn’t want to invite into his heart. 

Maybe Loki was right. Maybe it was easier to embrace a narrative that would keep him sane and his world intact. To escape into illusion. But wasn't that what Odin had done? Banished every truth that he didn't like from the universe, purged the world until it was too small and too mangled for anyone else to live in? Thor preferred the things he _knew_ were true. 

“You know that I love you, right? Brother?” 

Loki smiled. He didn’t look at him when he did, but it looked sincere enough. “I rarely ever doubt it.”  

**Author's Note:**

> For prompts or whatever find me on langernameohnebedeutung.tumblr.com


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